So, let's put things in perspective. This is my 2006:
Yeah, after this week I've won $1,000 so far this year. Pretty awe-inspiring.
This week is once again forcing me to stop and do some serious self-evaluation. I can't hide any more from the following observations:
- I'm not making a very good living from poker.
- I don't seem to be improving.
- I'm not enjoying the game, or this lifestyle, nearly as much at I used to.
- I'm not good enough at poker to make a living from it.
- I'm never going to get any better. I'm maxed out.
- I hate poker, and I hated my old job. So I need to figure something else out.
Commence serious rant.
From time to time I've observed that I tend to live my life as if I'm waiting for something to happen to me, instead of making something happen for myself. That's how I've been with poker too. I read stories about guys who were just grinding along at low limits and then one day something just clicks and they start crushing their game and soon they're playing $100/200 and winning 6 figures in a month. Its like I've been just sitting around waiting for that to happen to me. What the fuck? What a terrible approach.
How am I going to get make myself get better? Yeah I've read a couple books once or twice. Yeah I spend a lot of time reading poker forums. But I don't REALLY think about that stuff. I don't REALLY try to learn. I just kind of put it in front of my eyes and go through the motions without any heart behind it. I don't go back through my hand histories after a session and look for mistakes I made. I don't bust out a calculator and figure out if I had the odds to make that call.
At some point I stopped thinking about poker. I stopped working at it. I rarely put my opponents on hands. I mostly just play my own cards and hope I'm playing profitably. Sometimes I'll notice that a players stats look really bad, and so then I assume I'm better than them. Mostly I just isolate and then call down. I'm not playing poker, its like I'm playing Marco Polo and just treading water in the corner of the pool hoping the blind idiot doesn't bump into me. God forbid I actually swim around.
Going through the motions doesn't cut it in the real real world like it does in the fake real world (corporate world). Hell, going through the motions puts you on the fast track to success in the corporate world. People pretend to be busy all day, then they even stay in the office late to make it look like they're working reallllllly hard. Questioning the way things are done is more likely to get you scolded than rewarded. So you just sit at your desk and find ways to make your boss think that you're better than the guy sitting next to you. But your boss doesn't care because he's thinking of ways to make his boss think he's better than the guy in the office next to his.
When I lose, I assume bad luck is to blame. I'm playing well so it must be bad variance! So I'll make it up in volume! I'll play more tables and more hours! Who am I trying to convince? I've got hundreds of thousands of hands now, and they say that I'm winning at most 1BB/100 hands, and showing no sign of improvement from a year ago. I probably play even worse when I play more tables, and I certainly don't learn anything.
All of this makes perfect sense. I didn't quit my job to play poker, I quit my job because I didn't like it. When I quit, my idea was that I could pay the bills playing 20 hours per week and use the extra time to figure out what the hell to do with my life. And I've done the first part - I've won barely enough to pay my bills this whole time - but I haven't done the 2nd part. I don't know what I want to do with my life.
At some point I just started saying "I'm a poker player" and that was what I was doing with my life. Except I never actually have approached it that way. From time to time I've made token efforts to fix some problem but I've never truly approached poker like I'm running my own business and I have only myself to answer to.
Hopefully this latest loss has shocked me into coherence. I need to do 2 things really quickly. First I have to start devoting some time to figuring out what I plan to do with my life, both for the next few years and beyond. And second, I need to figure out a better way to approach poker as long as it is going to be my primary income source.
It has been almost a year since I quit that job. In some ways I've been living the dream. But I think it is time to wake up.
5 comments:
so i guess most people would assume that i've "figured out" my life. being in an 8-9 year graduate program will have that effect. but i'm lazy and so far (4 years in) i don't really like any of it. i feel like when i'm done all this school i'll figure out what i actually want to do. maybe i'll like doing what i'm training to do, maybe i'll open a bakery.
i think "wasting" a year playing poker isn't such a bad idea if you can actually figure out what you want to do "for real". wasting time in more school isn't going to help unless somehow you can be sure it will be worth it. but, like me, that's pretty much impossible without just going to more school. and school sucks.
have you ever heard me be this cynical?
that marco polo analogy is probably the best i've heard from you. then again, that's not saying much. and how come your timestamp is off? it's 16:08 Mar 8 when i post this.
dammit, it corrected itself.
i think "wasting" a year playing poker isn't such a bad idea if you can actually figure out what you want to do "for real"
thats a big if
wasting time in more school isn't going to help unless somehow you can be sure it will be worth it.
if nothing else, at least at the end of it you can practice your profession and command a good income
and school sucks.
the real world sucks more i think
have you ever heard me be this cynical?
probably not.
This is an old post (archaic even), but I just have to react to it. People tend to overplay their negative experiences, in fact, negative emotions tend to affect human behavior at least 2.5 times than positive emotions, leading you to see that black dot on a white paper.
Poker, just like anything else, can be frustrating, but it isn't at all impossible to master. I hope that in the 5 years past this post, you've gained a sufficient edge in playing poker (that is, if you haven't stopped yet).
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